Submission Text Full Submission Page

Movie features

  • Emulator used: FCE Ultra 0.98.25 (April 6, 2008 version).
  • Aims for fastest time.
  • Aims to finish all movies as close as possible at the same time.
  • Takes damage to save time.
  • Abuses programming errors in the game.
  • Uses no passwords.
  • Controls 6 Mega Mans through One input.

About the run

Well folks, here it is, TASVideos first Sextuple TAS :) After I had finished about a year ago the Quadruple TAS with my dear friend Baxter, I felt I needed to do this to satisfy my curiosity. I decided to finish only 1 stage in each game because obviously you cannot slide in Mega Man and Mega Man 2. Mega Man and Mega Man 2 are much shorter games compared to the others. Mega Man and Mega Man 2 are 15-20 minute runs while the others are around the 30-minute range. So by the time I've finished Mega Man 3-6, the viewers would see 2 blank screens for several minutes, which is in my opinion bad. Also, this run is meant to be demo run. My initial aim was to finish all 6 bosses at the same time/frame so that it looks entertaining. However, as I progressed I realized that that goal became more and more unrealistic. You could fool around a lot of time so that other Mega Mans can catch up but I felt wasting so many seconds to satisfy my initial goal was a bit too much if you ask me. So, I revised my goal and aimed to finish all games as close as possible at the same time. In order to fully understand what the heck is going on, do not focus your eyes on any game. Instead, try to watch the center of your monitor. When I did this, I somehow felt it was easier to follow the progress than the Quadruple run, you decide! Anyway, to replay this run, follow these steps:
  • Open 6 FCEU's (all versions from 0.98.16 to 0.98.27 should work), and align them.
  • Load the games and pause them all.
  • Enable Background Input (at config), if it was already enabled when FCEU started, disable it first, and enable it again (it will automatically enable Run In Background).
  • Load the same movie file at all FCEU's (note that it will only give a correct ROM checksum for one of the games so do not worry about it).
  • Unpause (with a hotkey... background input will make all games unpause at the same time) and enjoy!
Please visit the submission text of the quadruple run to get a lot useful information of how certain techniques were performed in this run. I would like to thank Baxter for helping me setting up this run and most importantly, I would to thank... Myself! ^_^ O_o :)

Truncated: This is an interesting display of TASing skills, let's leave it at that. It is not so interesting to watch, according to the viewers. It has suffered the same criticism as the quad run, but with less of the good stuff.
Therefore, rejecting.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1991: AngerFist's NES Mega Man 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 in 02:42.90
Joined: 7/25/2007
Posts: 109
It's impressive for what it is, but it's just too short to be much more entertaining than the MM3/4/5/6 one. Personally, two more games and around 87 (random estimate) less levels is not enough to cut it for me. "Demo run" or not. On another note, wouldn't the lack of sliding in MM1 and MM2 make up for them being shorter? Not abusing glitches in them could also make up for the longer time of the other ones. There's no need to go all-out on all of them (that's why we have the standard runs).
Skilled player (1410)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
Great job on actually finishing it! Setting up all 6 emulators to even watch this TAS I find quite annoying... having to do this every time you want to work on your TAS is just cruel. I'm not even talking about having to consider that everything you press affects all games. I seriously have no idea how it is possible to do this using only 1 savestate (consider this as both a compliment and a point of critique). Knowing that all levels are completed with the same input makes it kinda fun. There were also some other things I spotted which looked nice, such as avoiding needles at that megaman 3 bossfight. I'm sure I missed a lot of stuff though, so it would be great if an AVI were to be encoded for easier viewing. I'm interested in watching it a few times more, and focussing mostly on one game at a time, but I don't think I want to do that on the emulators. Although you could see that the movement was correlated (if one had to move left, others had to wait, if one shoots, others also or have to stop on a ladder), but you cannot really say it looked like it all came from one input (the quadrun also suffered from this, but this run certainly isn't any better on this aspect). The run does suffer a lot from the things which were the reason why we decided to do four megaman runs, and not six: - Some megamans running while others slide doesn't make the movements more correlated. -It's even harder to follow than the quadrun since the movies are alligned in 3x2, instead of 2x2. The top left and bottom right movies are very far from one another, and it's hard to follow them both (even if you were to only focus on these two movies). - Since two games are a lot shorter, these would be completed far too soon. You tried to solve this by doing only one stage, as a demo (and I certainly wouldn't advocate doing more stages)... but this brings up something else: the games aren't really completed (I know, they aren't supposed to, but it's still a fact). While this was done so that the movies could finish somewhat at the same time, there was unfortunately quite a time difference at the end of the movie between some games. - Playing with 6 games instead of 4 also slows down the gameplay for more games, since they all affect one another, so if watching a particular movie, it will a slower than if it were part of a quadrun. All in all I think it's great you finished this run, since you are a very capable TASer, and would probably be more productive without others slowing you down :P As for the run itself, I think it needs an AVI, and it will be fun for people who are interested in it to watch it, and maybe even watch it a few times. I don't think the run needs to be published because it is an unfinished movie and the concept is not as novel as the quadrun......... still nice that it's there for people who are interested, good job!
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Holy shit! When you and Baxter were making the quadruple run, I thought it was too much to handle. Little did I know. I'm not going to set up the emulators now as I don't even have FCEU at the moment. But perhaps I will later.
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While this is an incredible performance and an awesome show of TASing prowess, I have my serious doubts about the true entertainment value. The double Megaman X run was awesome at almost all possible levels (although they could perhaps have looked a bit more "in sync" with each other for added entertainment instead of relying so much in one megaman doing something when the other is not controllable at the moment). The final double-movie itself was quite easy to follow and understand. (Also, having only two soundtracks made it fairly listenable.) When the quadruple run was announced it was a very exciting idea and I was looking forward to watching it. However, while the achievement itself was very admirable, the resulting movie was a big disappointment. It was very confusing and it was difficult to see what's going on. The four soundtracks at the same time also formed such a cacophony that it was completely unlistenable. Entertainmentwise it was a complete letdown, for me at least. I doubt this sextuple run would be much better. I'm guessing it will be even worse. While I completely admire the feat, I doubt I'll enjoy actually watching it... :/ If I had watched this I would probably vote meh.
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I made an AVI (testing quality). It desynced in Mega Man 3, but all other games played fine. http://tracker.tasvideos.org/megaman1to6-tas-6gameswithsameinput-desynced-angerfist.avi.torrent (20 MB)
emu
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Baxter pretty much summed up my thoughts about the run. Hats off to you for the accomplishment, cool demo, but probably not worth working on a complete run. Btw, I also got a desynch with my MM3 rom but it actually sends Gertrude into jail with the monopoly rom (don't worry, she got a "get out of jail card") :)
Mitjitsu
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The problem is not the combined sound coming from the games unlike the quadrun. Its the fact that its to confusing to follow espeacially when you're focusing on a 3x2 screen and that means that you can't watch whats happening on the bottom-right and top-left screens since the distance is far apart.
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lol this was cool, something you show to your friends then get told its fake because he jumped and he didn't.
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I was going to write some stuff but Warp wrote exactly what I was going to say so just reread that, yeah. Also: 1) Less is more, law of diminishing returns, etc. 2 seems like the optimal number, plus there are 2 channels in stereo anyway. 2) The dual TAS was good since it was a novel idea, but enough Mega Man please. I think it would be better to see a dual TAS with 2 wildly different games, in terms of aesthetics or gameplay, for juxtaposition. Something like Contra + Barbie (don't pay attention to the specific example, I didn't give it any thought). 3) Although I support AngerFist, it would be funny if Zoid came into this thread and started hating.
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Enhasa wrote:
I think it would be better to see a dual TAS with 2 wildly different games, in terms of aesthetics or gameplay, for juxtaposition. Something like Contra + Barbie (don't pay attention to the specific example, I didn't give it any thought).
Please see the easter egg in http://tasvideos.org/1969S.html (note that it wasn't made solely for this purpose though).
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AKA wrote:
Hello anti AKA people
Hello right back atcha.
I agree with Warp
Don't see that every day.
Voted NO for NO reason
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Voting no because of the lack of colored dinosaurs.
Has never colored a dinosaur.
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Meh, why not. SEY
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What, no NVA suggested screenshots?!
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Twelvepack wrote:
Voting no because of the lack of colored dinosaurs.
You win the thread. Thread over.
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Joined: 12/10/2007
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Err, back to the run :P I watched the demo that Bisqwit created and while I think it is a feat in itself that the one movie completes 6 games, there is probably one main problem. There is just way to much shit happening at once. It is really quite hard to watch all 6 games running at once, not to mention you have to mute the sound.
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LagDotCom wrote:
I agree with Warp
Don't see that every day.
Try harder.
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Yrr
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Doing this run surely required a lot of work, however: The sound is really terrible. There is far to much stuff at the same time. So you miss most of the actual work. Since you have to focus on all runs, the gameplay is bad. Sorry, but I vote no.
Lord_Tom
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An impressive achievement, though a little hard on the eyes and ears. Would it be possible (at the emulator or .avi level) to pull a trick like Bisqwit did with klmz's SMB1 run and have different music playing with the sound effects intact? If it were, it would be nice to have an .avi with only 1 game's music output (or even MegaMan X's), with the sound fx from all. I've gathered that there are people on this site who are intimately familiar with at least the early MM's source code, so maybe ROM hacks to disable music in 5 of the 6 wouldn't be too hard? Just a random thought...
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Lord Tom wrote:
Would it be possible (at the emulator or .avi level) to pull a trick like Bisqwit did with klmz's SMB1 run and have different music playing with the sound effects intact?
Not without A) lots of probable desyncs or B) lots of manual labor. I could attempt it in MM1 and MM2 though. (Not that I will.) I don't know how MM3―MM6 sound engines work, so without more reverse engineering labor, couldn't do.
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Quad run was a yes vote for me, but this is meh. An even more incredible achievement in theory, but the end result is not as good as the quadrun.
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No, that's just too freaky and kind of overdoing it imo. It's too hard to make sense of what happens on the screen for me. Quadruns and double runs have their pros and cons, but this is just too much. Finishing this run wouldn't be worth the effort involved, I guess.
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On second thought, I think there is a better way to label this movie; just one that will complete every Megaman from 1-6. Actually putting the movies side-by-side doesn't seem to accomplish much, so why not let the achievements be separate?
Voted NO for NO reason
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Bah, maybe it's too hard for you all to watch, but I thought it was brilliant. You're not *supposed* to watch each one at the same time and magically be able to follow the details. It's an experience. Also, don't tamper with the sound, if you really can't tolerate it there's a volume control. Big yes vote, good show Mr. AngerFist!
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